Updates and Newsletters: The main news stories from the major sources, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Michael Novakhov ("Mike Nova") | Public RSS Feeds on the various topics of Global Security | Topics oriented news reviews

The Incomparable(!) Red Star Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble were created in the USSR Strategic Missile Forces in January 1977.

In its first stage, the ensemble performed concerts primarily for troops of the Missile Forces. It was in 1989, after Anatoly Bazhalkin had become artistic director, that the ensemble expanded its artistic horizons. The work of the ensemble was no longer limited to entertaining the troops, but also involved participation in arts festivals in many cities of Russia. Then, came the move into top concert halls of Moscow and the eventual embarking on foreign tours to Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium and the United States. They also performed regularly on radio and television.

Wednesday November 30th, 2016 at 7:26 PMA Raleigh police officer was shot during an encounter with the suspect in a break-in at a condominium complex near Lake Johnson on Wednesday afternoon, according to the department.

The shooting took place about 2:45 p.m. (Thank you... "Cinco!") at 1230 University Court ("Kick them out! To the salt mines!) in the Lake Park Condominiums, off Lake Dam Road south of Avent Ferry Road (What a valuable insight!). The officer and a person police described as a suspect were taken to WakeMed (Are you sure it wasn't ClubMed?), both with gunshot wounds. Neither the officer or the suspect was killed, said city spokesman Damien Graham ("Cra, cra, Ham! Be damned!").

Police were responding to a break-in at one of the condos when “one of the officers and the suspect sustained injuries as a result of gunshots,” according to a statement released by the Raleigh Police Department shortly before 6 p.m. The statement did not provide additional details, including the names of the officer and the suspect.

Raleigh police notified the State Bureau of Investigation, which is standard procedure after an officer-involved shooting. The SBI (How do you dare to call them "Sons of the Bitches Idiots"?!) will submit its findings to the Wake County District Attorney (If he is still awake...).

The Raleigh Police Department will provide a public report on the shooting to the city manager within five business days.

Resident Dylan Bounds, 23, was sitting in his apartment in another building when he heard two or three police cars pull up and he went out onto his balcony. Within five minutes, several more police cars arrived, and Bounds said he saw a police officer run out “bent over, breathing heavy.” He said the officer took off his shirt and vest, and “you could see a little red spot.” (Какой ужас! Милиция! No further comments!)

A short time later, paramedics brought someone else out on a stretcher, he said.

Philip Palmer (Feel my lip: tak on mer ili ne mer? That's the question!), who lives in an apartment in an adjoining complex, said he heard the gunshots through the door to his screen porch.

Palmer said he soon heard a lot of “upset voices” that sounded like they were coming from outside the condos at Lake Park.

“Eventually we heard people saying ‘Wake up,’” he said. “A group of people all frantically trying to get someone to wake up.”

Police kept people at a distance from the apartment building, including residents. Meredith Dann, 24, has lived at Lake Park condos for more than a year.

“This is crazy,” Dann said as she waited outside the police line that separated her from her home. “For the most part, it’s a safe area, although there are some sketchy people who live here.” (Very "sketchy", indeed... Flesh it out, not in.)

Antonio Neville (alter ego of Tonio Ville, I know him!), 21, has lived an an adjoining complex since February and described the area as a “quiet neighborhood.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Neville said. “It makes me sort of nervous, especially since it was a cop.”

Sen. Rucho: Board of Elections should make Durham recount ballots; be more transparent

When Donald Trump, hand on the Bible on Jan. 20, swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, we the people will have good reason to doubt he knows what he’s talking about. Consider what he tweeted out on Tuesday:

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Here’s where we explain what shouldn’t need explaining. Flag-burning is constitutionally protected speech. The Supreme Court has made this clear, in a ruling joined by Mr. Trump’s favorite justice, Antonin Scalia. It’s popular to want to punish flag-burners — pandering politicians, including Hillary Clinton, have tried. But the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular, even repulsive forms of expression. As the Supreme Court said in a 1990 decision finding a federal law against flag-burning unconstitutional, “Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.”

It’s interesting that so many of the people who are eager to punish flag-burners, like Mr. Trump, are at the same time so untroubled by speech that offends minorities, women and other Americans. They rail against any concern about that kind of speech as “political correctness.” But in this country, flag-burning is about as politically incorrect as anything you can do. Where is their courageous defense of speech now? Isn’t Mr. Trump the man who stood up for the freedom to say brutally unpleasant things? Who said, at the Republican convention: “I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

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The court, by the way, has also declared that citizenship cannot be stripped away, not by Congress or the president, not in this democracy.

Some may choose to read Mr. Trump’s social-media rants as relatively meaningless — the ramblings of a sleepless id, unmoored from thought or knowledge but tuned to Fox News, which apparently was airing a piece on college flag-burners at about the time Mr. Trump sent his tweet.

But we don’t have the luxury of merely mocking someone who is now as powerful as Mr. Trump. Before you tune him out, remember what the right-wing propaganda site Breitbart was celebrating on Tuesday — that Mr. Trump’s social-media presence allows him to get his message to millions, bypassing “corporate media.” He has more than 16 million Twitter followers. With Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, he can feed lies and ignorance directly to 36 million people.

He tweets, he posts, he incites. He trolls. He commands a global platform and will soon be America’s commander in chief. But it has to be said, and said again: This is not normal. It demeans the presidency.

(CNN)There's a reason you aren't supposed to leave vehicles unattended in the middle of New York. You never know how valuable their contents can be.

A man stole an aluminum bucket full of gold flakes valued at $1.6 million from the back of an unattended truck in midtown Manhattan on September 29. The pail weighed approximately 86 pounds.

An armored truck company was making a pickup and left the back of the truck open and unattended in front of 48 West 48th St. between 5th and 6th avenues. In the time the truck was left alone, a man was able to walk up and make off with some of its precious cargo.

Surveillance video showed a man taking a bucked off the back of the truck.

In surveillance footage released by the New York Police Department, a man walks up to the back of the truck, grabs the bucket, and shuffles off with it in broad daylight. At first, he's about to walk past the truck, but then he notices the unattended bucket and makes a turn to grab it. The video shows two men chatting in front of the truck as the suspect walks away with the gold.

The men don't seem to notice the gold disappearing. In the footage, the thief can be seen struggling under the weight of the loot.

The NYPD is still looking for the thief. He is described as a Hispanic male who is about 5 feet 6 inches tall, 150 pounds and between 50 and 60 years old.

The Israeli Air Force is reported by Arab media to have launched attacks overnight Tuesday on a Syrian army position in Damascus and a Hizballah arms convoy driving on the Damascus-Beirut highway to Lebanon. They add that the strikes were carried out by Israeli planes from Lebanese air space. A third Israel air strike was said to have been conducted on a Hizballah position in the vicinity of that highway.There is no confirmation of these Arab media reports.

In The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, offers a scathing, data-driven account of the misguided and sometimes malicious attacks on the law enforcement community that are spreading like kudzu across the country—and of their consequences. Indeed, as I write this, reports out of San Diego of another officer being killed and another seriously wounded are flashing across the screen.[1] This kind of event has become all too commonplace. At the same time, rates of violent crime are creeping upwards in many of our largest cities after a decades-long decrease.

The public should be, but too often is not, horrified by spectacles such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists in St. Paul, Minnesota marching in the streets yelling, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon”;[2] or BLM protestors in New York City chanting, “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!”;[3] or a message posted by the African American Defense League urging its followers to “hold a barbeque” and “sprinkle Pigs Blood!”;[4] or the Facebook posting by a man in Detroit following the slaying of five Dallas police officers which read, “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter. Kill all white cops.”[5] One would think that, in any civilized society, such sentiments would be universally condemned as barbaric. Instead, such deplorable rhetoric is met with sympathy and tolerance by some on the Left.[6] One can acknowledge, as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich did recently, that “[i]f you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.” But one should also acknowledge, as Gingrich did, that, from the perspective of the police, “[e]very time you walk up to a car you could be killed. Every time you go into a building where there’s a robbery you can be killed.”[7] The hateful rhetoric quoted above only serves to incite violence, and, to put it mildly, generates more heat than light.

Yet some elected officials act more like rabble-rousing community organizers fanning the flames of racial tension, perhaps inadvertently, rather than acting like responsible public officials seeking to restore calm and respect for law and order.[8] Racial tensions in this country are clearly on the rise. A new Rasmussen poll indicates that 60% of likely voters think race relations have gotten worse since Barack Obama became president, up from 42% in late 2014,[9] and African Americans are far more likely to believe that they are treated unfairly by the police than whites.[10]

While, no doubt, there may be some police officers who harbor racist thoughts and tendencies—which is likely the case with every profession—that number is, I strongly suspect, very small and diminishing rapidly over time. And, of course, some police officers do engage in misconduct, occasionally with deadly consequences. Earlier this year, five New Orleans police officers pleaded guilty in connection with the killings that took place on Danziger Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (including one officer who pleaded guilty to covering up the misdeeds),[11] and video footage showed a South Carolina police officer shooting and killing a clearly unarmed man who was running away from him.[12] And many people (black and white) can recount stories in which they were treated rudely, perhaps unjustifiably so, by police officers. Do BLM protestors have a point? Yes, although their tactics and rhetoric are often inconducive to fostering improved relations between the police and the communities they serve. Clearly some police officers have reacted to tense situations with excessive force, most likely the result of inadequate training[13] rather than racism, which sometimes results in a tragic outcome. Of course, when police officers do use excessive force or commit an unjustified homicide, the matter should be investigated, with officers encouraged to come forward to say what happened, which may require something of a cultural change within the law enforcement community. And there should be consequences, up to and including criminal prosecution against those involved and those who attempt to cover up what happened, as happened recently in New Orleans and in New York City in the Abner Louima case.[14]

To hear some protestors, though, one would think that most police officers are card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan who run around indiscriminately shooting young black men. Indeed, every incident in which a black citizen is shot by a white police officer becomes part of the ongoing narrative of racist-cops-running-rampant, even when it is definitively established beyond peradventure that the shooting was justified, as was the case when Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Long after it was clear that Brown had attacked Wilson and was grabbing for his gun and that the whole “Hands up, don’t shoot!” story was built on a pack of lies,[15] Officer Wilson was drummed out of the police force,[16] Jesse Jackson decried the fact that Brown’s “killer walked away,”[17] and Michael Brown’s mother (whose personal grief is, of course, understandable) was invited to the stage at the Democratic National Convention.[18]

Mac Donald chronicles the events in Ferguson, including the ensuing riots, which have been repeated to devastating effect in other cities following police-citizen confrontations. She argues that the increasing hostility toward—and murder of—police officers has led to a “Ferguson Effect” in which police officers in some communities are standing down by cutting back on proactive policing particularly in high crime areas out of fear for their safety or of being falsely accused of racism, which is, in turn, leading to more crime.[19]

While some question whether the Ferguson Effect is real,[20] there is considerable support for the phenomenon. As a veteran Boston police officer recently stated, “Sometimes we feel like our hands are tied behind our backs and people are out to get us.”[21] Although reluctant to use the term “Ferguson Effect,” FBI Director James Comey admitted to being deeply concerned about the uptick in violence in many of our inner cities and stated that he has “a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing [police] behavior.”[22] After analyzing data from ten cities that saw a 33% increase in homicides in 2015 and which have large African American populations, Richard Rosenfeld, a well-respected criminologist who was initially skeptical of the existence of the Ferguson Effect, now says that “[t]he only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” which is now his “leading hypothesis” to explain the dramatic increase in crime.[23]

Are law enforcement officers nervous? No doubt, and for good reason. Tensions are high. According to Donald Mihalek of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, forensic studies have established that a suspect with a gun in his waistband can draw and fire his weapon in 0.8 seconds, faster than the time it takes for an officer to respond.[24] Moreover, Mac Donald contends, “an officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 18.5 times higher than the chance of an unarmed black person getting killed by a cop.”[25] When police officers in tense and unknown circumstances hesitate to act, they die.[26]

Fearing for their safety, officers in major cities are increasingly patrolling in pairs,[27] and in Baltimore, where crime rates have shot through the roof (murders have increased by 63% in 2015), police officers have quit in large numbers.[28] Who can blame them? Through August 1, 2016, firearms-related killings of law enforcement officers are up a staggering 70% over this period last year (from 20 to 34)[29] and ambush killings are up nearly 400% (3 to 14),[30] according to data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. In 2014, law enforcement officers were assaulted 15,725 times, resulting in 13,824 injuries;[31] those numbers are likely up too this year. While these figures have been worse in years past,[32] they are, nonetheless, deeply disturbing. And while there may be other factors contributing to the recent upsurge in violent crime—such as the heroin epidemic and the violence that has ensued as Mexican drug cartels and affiliated gangs compete for new customers and territories[33]—any hesitancy by police officers to engage in discretionary proactive law enforcement efforts will only serve to exacerbate an already bad situation.

Unfortunately, the facts seem to bear this out. Homicide rates in 56 large U.S. cities were up approximately 17% in 2015 over 2014 (much more in some cities), the largest increase in a quarter century.[34] Homicide rates have continued to rise at an alarming rate during the first half of 2016; they are up another 15% in 51 large cities that have reported data, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association.[35] While some cities, such as Milwaukee, have seen declines, others such as Chicago have seen dramatic increases (316 homicides in the first half of 2016, compared to 211 in the first half of 2015).[36] And it’s not just homicides that are up in the first half of this year; there have been more than 600 more non-fatal shootings, over 1,000 more robberies, and nearly 2,000 more aggravated assaults compared to the first half of last year.[37] Again, violent crime rates are still substantially below where they were in the 1960s through the early 1990s, but this reversal is quite dramatic, and the trend is quite alarming. What is needed to combat crime in communities of color is more of a police presence, not less.

If the body count is racking up in many of our inner cities, it is not because police officers are wantonly shooting black people; it is because black people, predominantly black men, are shooting each other. As Mac Donald correctly notes, “young black men commit homicide at nearly ten times the rate of young white and Hispanic males combined,” and their victims are overwhelmingly other black residents who live in their communities. In Chicago, for instance, in 2015, 2,460 African American people were shot (nearly seven each day), compared to only 78 white people (one every 4.6 days); in 2011 (the last year for which data was released by the Chicago police), 71% of those committing murder were black and 75% of murder victims were black.[38] Homicide is now the number one cause of death among African Americans between the ages of 1 and 44.[39] And, Mac Donald adds, “until the black crime rate comes down, police presence is going to be higher in black neighborhoods, increasing the chance that when police tactics go awry, they will have a black victim.”

As Mac Donald points out, nobody on the Left seem to want to talk about how the crime problem in our inner cities has been exacerbated by, among other things, rampant drug use, high dropout rates, and the breakdown of the family structure, where over 70% of African American children are now born to single mothers.[40] Mac Donald also notes that nobody wants to talk about the fact that the people who benefit the most from aggressive policing are law-abiding African Americans who live in the inner cities and are trying to lead decent lives, but are afraid to go out at night, let their children play outside, or go to work. These same people also lose much-needed goods, services, and jobs because entrepreneurs refuse to open businesses in crime-plagued communities; as Mac Donald reminds us, “Lowered crime is a precondition to economic revival, not its consequence.” Any dialogue between the police and local community leaders ought to acknowledge and address these issues too if any real progress is likely to occur.

The War on Cops is not without its flaws. There were times (several actually) where I found Mac Donald’s rhetoric too acerbic, and she makes some arguments with which I am sympathetic but not in complete agreement. For example, she is vehemently opposed to the criminal justice reform movement (“America does not have an incarceration problem; it has a crime problem.”), whereas I have written[41] and spoken[42] in favor of some forms of criminal justice reform. Mac Donald states that those who favor criminal justice reform do so because they contend, falsely, that our country has a “mass incarceration” problem or because the criminal justice system is suffused with racism—neither of which I believe. Nonetheless, Mac Donald’s views on this topic, as on all others she covers, are as thoughtful and articulate as they are provocative.

Law enforcement officers have a difficult and dangerous job to do. As former President George W. Bush said at the recent memorial service honoring the five slain Dallas law enforcement officers, “Most of us imagine if the moment called for [it], that we would risk our lives to protect a spouse or a child. Those wearing the uniform assume that risk for the safety of strangers. They and their families share the unspoken knowledge that each new day can bring new dangers.”[43]

We should never forget it and should honor and support those whose job it is “to swallow the sorrows of humanity—from the banal to the truly tragic—and to return to work the next day and do it all over again.”[44] As Heather Mac Donald points out time and again in The War on Cops, things are bad. They could, however, get much worse. After all, Mac Donald notes, “The trend of increasing crime rests on firmer statistical evidence than does the claim that we are living through an epidemic of racist police killings.”

29 November 2016

Three weeks after the US presidential election, the political crisis triggered by the initiative to recount the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—three states that helped ensure Trump’s victory over Clinton—is escalating. This initiative coincides with the continued growth of Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote, which now stands at more than 2.2 million. This is, by far, a historically unprecedented margin for a candidate who did not also win in the Electoral College.

Jill Stein, the presidential candidate of the Green Party, initiated the recount campaign last week following a media report featuring University of Michigan professor and cyber security expert J. Alex Halderman. Using right-wing arguments to legitimize the recount effort in the eyes of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party—which did not intend to contest the election results—Halderman claims that a team he leads found persuasive evidence that electronic voting machines in these three states may have been hacked by Russia, a statement that he repeated in an affidavit supporting Stein’s petition for a recount in Wisconsin.

On Saturday, the Clinton campaign announced that it would participate in the process begun by Stein. Trump responded on Sunday by not only denouncing the recount but also charging, without any factual substantiation, that he also won the popular vote if the “millions” of illegal votes for Clinton were discounted.

The demand for a recount is a legitimate political response to a situation in which the votes in the states in question were particularly close (a Trump margin of 22,000 in Wisconsin, 10,000 in Michigan and 68,000 in Pennsylvania).

Much more is involved, however, than a technical procedure in these three states. The recount campaign has exposed political fissures within the ruling elite, complicated efforts to carry out a seamless transition to a Trump administration, and intensified the mood of popular discontent and crisis that has been building since Election Day.

The response of the Obama administration to the recount says a great deal about its indifference toward basic democratic principles. In comments to the New York Times reported on Sunday, a senior White House official insisted on the “overall integrity of the electoral infrastructure,” which ensured results that “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”

This is obviously untrue. The election of Trump does not represent the “will of the people.” He lost the popular vote by a substantial margin. Moreover, Trump campaigned on the basis of demagogic lies, portraying himself as a defender of the working class.

In their rush to embrace Trump, the Democrats, along with the media, are downplaying and covering up the significance of Trump’s popular vote defeat. The Democratic Party is far more worried about provoking opposition among workers and youth than it is about the tactical differences it has with the Republicans and Trump. On basic elements of class policy, the two parties are, as the CIA agent-in-chief Obama put it, “on the same team.”

The Green Party, rather than denouncing the undemocratic character of the election process, is justifying its recount initiative with the claim that Russian hacking may have affected the outcome of the vote. Instead of seeking to raise the democratic consciousness of the voters, the Greens—in a manner typical of capitalist political parties—employ reactionary arguments that are pitched toward the interests of the ruling class. In effect, the Greens are arguing that they are seeking a recount not to prevent Trump from stealing the election, but rather to stop Putin from interfering in American politics.

There is an unstated premise in the Green Party initiative—and Stein has said nothing to contradict this—that the election of Clinton would have spared the United States all the unhappiness that will follow from Trump’s victory. This is an exercise in political deception, which views Trump as some sort of dreadful and accidental departure from the familiar grooves of American democracy.

It does not seem to occur to the Greens that the outcome of the 2016 election is, in objective terms, the expression and outcome of a profound crisis of American society. Even if Trump fell short of Clinton in the popular vote, the fact that he received 62 million votes is a devastating condemnation of everything that the Democratic Party and the Obama administration represent. What level of social distress and dysfunction could lead so many millions of people, including many workers, to give their vote to this reactionary charlatan?

The rise of Trump is the product of twenty-five years of unending war and fifteen years of the “war on terror,” accompanied by historic levels of social inequality and the erosion of basic democratic rights. It is also a verdict on eight years of the Obama administration, whose policies Clinton pledged to continue. In what way would a Clinton presidency contribute to surmounting the economic, political and social crisis that provided the objective impulse for the rise of Trump?

The Greens, far from advancing an alternative to the Democratic Party, are positioning themselves as its most consistent defenders. Backed by a host of organizations that operated around the Democratic Party and supported the Greens in the elections, Stein is seeking to elevate the role of the Green Party as a political instrument of the ruling class in containing and smothering social opposition.

Under conditions of a historic crisis of capitalism, the working class must advance its own perspective and not allow itself to be corralled behind one or another faction of the ruling class and its political representatives.

Whatever the outcome of the recount, the election of 2016 has inaugurated a new period of convulsive political upheavals within the United States and beyond its borders. Even in the very unlikely event that the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are overturned, who can seriously believe that such an outcome would be accepted by Trump and his most ruthless backers?

There is no easy way out of the crisis of American and world capitalism. The critical question for workers and young people is to break completely with the entire political apparatus of the ruling class and advance an independent response based on a socialist, internationalist and revolutionary program. We urge our readers and supporters to draw the necessary political conclusions from the election of 2016 and join the Socialist Equality Party.

Eleven people were injured Monday on the campus of Ohio State University when a student veered his car onto the sidewalk, leaped out and stabbed several people with a butcher knife, law enforcement officials said. The attacker was shot dead within about a minute by a campus police officer.

Two law enforcement officials identified the suspected attacker as Abdul Artan, 18. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the name had not been made public. The officials said that Mr. Artan was of Somali descent.

Mr. Artan is listed as a logistics management major in Ohio State’s online directory. Officials at Columbus State Community College said Mr. Artan also attended that school and graduated with an associate of arts degree. He was on the Columbus State dean’s list in 2015 and graduated cum laude.

The authorities said on Monday afternoon that they were investigating whether the attack may have been an act of terrorism.

“We believe the threat was ended when the officer engaged the suspect,” said Monica Moll, the university’s director of public safety. “We’re very fortunate that an O.S.U.P.D. officer was there and took quick action, and we believe that injuries were minimized as a result of that.”

Eight of the hospitalized victims were believed to be stable, and another patient in critical condition was expected to survive.

“This was done on purpose,” said Chief Craig Stone of the Ohio State University police. “To go over the curb and strike pedestrians and then get out and start striking with the knife — that was on purpose.”

The attack, initially reported as an “active shooter” by the university, stunned students who were returning to class after Thanksgiving break, leading to a 90-minute shelter-in-place warning and an admonition from campus officials to “Run Hide Fight.”

Haylee Gardiner, a sophomore, said she was on her way to a chemistry lab when the attack happened around 9:50 a.m.

“I saw a bunch of people running, and when they were running, they were screaming and yelling,” said Ms. Gardiner, who scrambled to a residence hall for shelter. “And then all of a sudden, I heard four or five gunshots.”

Sean Cody, 23, from Akron, Ohio, was running late for his philosophy class, and after hearing a loud boom, he sprinted into a building to alert fellow students.

“Then there was a bang, a dust cloud, then shouting and screaming, and people just booking it in every direction,” Mr. Cody said. “Then, 30 seconds, a minute later, there were gunshots.”

During the chaos, students huddled in locked rooms, and some took to Twitter, posting photos from inside barricaded classrooms.

The episode was reported near Watts Hall, a building at the heart of the university’s sprawling Columbus campus that houses materials science and engineering programs. Officials said it was unclear whether a fire alarm at that building earlier Monday was connected to the attack.

Heavily armed SWAT teams swarmed the campus, and at one point could be seen making their way up a stairwell of a nearby parking garage before taking two people away in handcuffs. They were not believed to be suspects.

The episode on Monday was the latest mass-casualty episode on an American college campus. Multivictim shootings at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University and California’s Oikos University, among several others, have led colleges nationwide to plan how to respond to an attack. Monday’s instruction to “Run Hide Fight” came from a training program used by Ohio State and other groups for reacting to active shooting situations.

“We prepare for situations like this, but always hope never to have one,” said Michael Drake, Ohio State’s president.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- His inauguration less than eight weeks away, President-elect Donald Trump was confronted by new developments Saturday in recount efforts in three states pivotal to his Nov. 8 victory, even as he worked to fill foreign policy and national defense jobs in his incoming administration....

(BEIRUT) — A Syrian official blasted Turkey Saturday saying it is to blame for the death of its soldiers because it sent them to Syria, as the Syrian army said troops have captured a neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo days after the government resumed its offensive on the besieged rebel-held eastern part of the city.

Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad’s comments were the first by a Syrian official since Thursday when three Turkish soldiers were killed in northern Syria in what the Turkish military said was a pre-dawn Syrian airstrike. The account was disputed by Syrian activists who said the soldiers were killed by a suicide attack by the Islamic State group the day before.

Since then two more soldiers have been killed over the past two days in fighting near the town of al-Bab, an IS stronghold.

“Turkish policies are responsible for the tension in Turkish-Syrian relations,” Mekdad told the Lebanon-based Pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV. He added that Turkey took part in sending foreign fighters into Syria and armed them “in order to destroy Syria and Syrians.”

Mekdad did not confirm or deny whether Syrian aircraft were behind the attack that killed the three Turkish soldiers but said that “if the Turks want to complain they should complain to themselves. What happened was inside the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Since Syria’s crisis began in March 2011, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has been a strong supporter of Syrian rebels trying to remove President Bashar Assad from power.

Turkey sent ground troops into northern Syria in August to help Syrian opposition fighters battle both IS and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara sees as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in southeastern Turkey.

The Turkish troops are not fighting Syrian government forces, and have not been attacked by them, though Damascus has strongly objected to the military intervention.

On Saturday, Turkey’s state-run news agency said a Turkish soldier was killed and three wounded in an attack during an anti-IS operation in north Syria, raising to five the number of Turkish troops killed in Syria this week. It said the dead and wounded soldiers were brought back to Turkey.

The rising Turkish-Syrian tension came as Syrian troops captured Aleppo’s Hanano district days after government forces and their allies launched an offensive involving deadly street battles in the area.

The army said troops “have seized full control” of the eastern district in Syria’s largest city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops now control most of the district, adding that Hanano was the first Aleppo neighborhood to fall into the hands of rebels in 2012.

Syrian state media said rebel shelling of west Aleppo killed three people and wounded 15 adding that some 150 residents of east Aleppo have been able to leave the besieged area of 275,000 people on Saturday.

The Observatory said that since the government offensive resumed on east Aleppo on Nov. 15, 357 people have been killed in the city and nearby villages and towns.

The Observatory also reported that deals have been reached to evacuate fighters from the Tal and Khan al-Shih suburbs of the capital Damascus. It said hundreds of fighters from both suburbs will be evacuated to the northwestern province of Idlib, a rebel stronghold.

The two areas have been subjected to government attacks for weeks.

____

Associated Press writers Cinar Kiper in Istanbul and Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

New Pak army chiefCalcutta TelegraphIslamabad, Nov. 26: Pakistan today picked Lieutenant General Qamar Javed Bajwa to replace outgoing army chief General Raheel Sharif, who retires next week after completing his three-year tenure. The decision came as a surprise to many as Lieutenant ...and more »

Israeli police have arrested about two dozen Arabs on suspicion of arson after wildfires spread across the country, local authorities said Sunday, drawing sharp criticism from some politicians as tens of thousands fled their homes.

A flotilla of Russian warships in the Mediterranean is providing a high-profile show of force in support of the Syrian regime. But the deployment has also thrown into sharp relief the limits of Moscow’s conventional military.

State television broadcasts to the domestic audience Top Gun-style footage of bombers taking off from Russia’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. Foreign observers get to see one of the country’s most important weapons exports, the MiG-29 fighter plane, in action.

But the quarter-century-old Kuznetsov lacks the kind of powerful catapult system that is featured on U.S. carriers, forcing Russian planes to carry lighter payloads and less fuel, according to North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials.

And a dearth of highly trained aviators able to take off and land at sea has forced the ship to carry fewer pilots, according to Western officials. Moscow already lost one jet fighter when it crashed this month during a training flight on an approach to the carrier.

“The Russian navy has not had a lot of operational experience in recent years in actual combat,” said Eric Wertheim, author of The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World.

The Russian military hasn’t said that the Kuznetsov is taking part in the assault on Aleppo, though top NATO officials say that is the primary purpose of the deployment. Russia also has a number of planes stationed at an air base in Syria.

Western officials see the Kuznetsov operation—along with recent announcements that Russia will permanently base Iskander missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave of Kalingrad—as part of a two-pronged strategy from Russian President Vladimir Putin, particularly since the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.

“They are trying to play it both ways,” a Western official said. “On one hand, at the Putin level they have these messages of openness to rapprochement and dialogue and discussion. But…they are in effect taking out insurance in the case the Trump administration continues the course the West has been on vis-à-vis Russian misbehavior.”

In many respects, the Russians are taking a page from the U.S. Navy—albeit on a far smaller scale.

America’s carrier strike groups are perhaps the most potent symbol of Washington’s ability to project power. The U.S. maintains 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, allowing the president to send multiple battle groups to any part of the world.

Naval experts and Western military officials say the Russians have limited experience with long combat deployments.

The Russian flotilla also has been logistically stretched. Moscow withdrew a bid to refuel at Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta while the ships were en route to Syria, meaning the navy had to send supply ships to replenish the vessels, military analysts said.

At the same time, the Russians have tested their ability to launch and recover aircraft from the deck of the Kuznetsov under real-world combat conditions, a difficult skill for pilots to master, especially at night or in rough seas.

The Russian navy has a chance to “shake the rust out of their experience and equipment, both figuratively and literally,” in the Syria operation, said Mr. Wertheim.

There are other benefits for Moscow. “The navy has been showing the flag and getting headlines,” said Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author who has studied the Russian and Soviet navies. “Deploying the Kuznetsov has increased the navy’s prestige.”

Taking Aim

A Russian flotilla of warships off the coast of Syria is assisting in missions against rebels fighting the Assad regime.

Approximate location of flotilla

Approximate location of flotilla

Approximate location of flotilla

Approximate location of flotilla

Yet Mr. Polmar said the Russians are limited in comparison with the U.S. Navy in naval aviation and carrier operations.

He added that Russian aviators would maintain combat skills “with great, great difficulty” after the Kuznetsov goes in for an anticipated major overhaul and refurbishment following the Syria operation.

NATO has been keeping close watch on the flotilla with Norwegian, British and Spanish surface ships and a Dutch submarine.

A British frigate and a destroyer following the battle group stayed within close enough distance to stop the carrier from carrying out some training missions that the Russians didn’t want NATO to observe, according to a British official.

PARIS (Reuters) - Former prime ministers Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe go head-to-head on Sunday in a runoff vote for France's center-right presidential nomination, with the winner likely to face a showdown against a resurgent far-right in next year's election.

Three months ago Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who pledged to be the law-and-order candidate, called for an end to the “war on our police.” Trump did so just after Milwaukee erupted in rioting after a black suspect was shot and killed by police. Last month, the liberal news website Huffington Post declared Trump’s assertion “bunk.”

The Post, citing FBI data and academics who study crime and policing, pointed out that 2015 was one of the safest years on record in terms of law enforcement officers who were feloniously killed — as opposed to dying in vehicle crashes, for instance — in the line of duty.

Forty-one police officers were intentionally killed in 2015, with a record low recorded in 2013, 27. Last year’s total was just two-thirds of the average of 64 officers killed annually since 1980, and a third of the number killed each year in the early 1970s, according to the Post.

“Any suggestion in the political arena that there is a ‘war on cops,’ is symbolic political crime control rhetoric exaggerated by the fact that it is an election year,” Philip Stinson, a retired police officer and now a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, told the Post.

We think, however, that the Post and its sources would have a difficult time convincing those who actually patrol our streets or their families that they aren’t under siege.

On Thanksgiving Day, Collin Rose, 29, a K-9 officer at Wayne State University, died from gunshot wounds he sustained earlier in the week after encountering a suspect. Rose became the 61st police officer shot to death this year, based on a tally by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks violence against police.

The dramatic rise in police killings is disturbing enough in itself. But one-third of those slain in 2016 so far were victims of ambush killings — which police organizations say are typically defined by an element of surprise, assailants who conceal themselves, their weapons or their intents and a lack of provocation — and The Washington Post reported this week that such attacks have hit a 10-year high.

Police officers have been murdered while sitting in their patrol cars, eating meals, as they exited their vehicles in responding to calls.

That number of ambush murders might have crept higher last week had a pair of suspects in Alabama not suddenly gotten cold feet. The pair, who are black, planted a fake bomb at an elementary school and intended to shoot responding cops in order to start a “race war.” Authorities were not sure why they backed out of the murderous part of their plot.

Police work is inherently risky for those who choose to serve. They understand it can be dangerous, and that at any time some people they encounter can be violent, anti-social, mentally ill or unpredictable.

But what eludes those who criticize Trump, police union leaders and politicians for using the “war” rhetoric is the mindset that underpins such violence.

While some observers attribute the attacks on police to strained race relations and a desire for retaliation for perceived injustice suffered by black community in some areas, that doesn’t tell the whole story, as race is not a factor in all of these killings.

Rather, suspects who are willing to shoot and kill police without provocation exhibit a contempt toward authority and an orderly society. As Craig Floyd, president of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, recently told Fox News, “So much dialogue has centered around race relations, but there is a hatred in this country right now that's just gotten out of control. There is a lack of respect for government in general, and the most visible and vulnerable symbol of government in America is patrolling our streets in marked cars."

This violence, of course, threatens police directly. But the rest of us are affected in an indirect way. In one way, pure self-defense might lead police to ramp up militarism and community crackdowns. Or, as has been reported, police departments across the country are reporting that it’s become more difficult to find new recruits, and that they are sacrificing standards in order to compensate. That, in turn, could mean less qualified people who patrolling our streets, which could mean more incidents that cause police-community relations to deteriorate.

The “war” language might be a bit overblown, but it encapsulates the destructive nature of this threat to the safety and stability our society — and whatever we label it, we need to solve it sooner rather than later.

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The pair — who live together and are dating — confessed to calling 911 after they dropped off a faux bomb at Magnolia Elementary School in Trussville last week, but Edwards said he backed out of the second half of the plot: to shoot the cops who came to investigate.

“He wanted everybody in one place so he could kill cops. He made it clear to our guys he wanted to commit acts of violence,” Dave Hyche, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ assistant special agent for Alabama told the newspaper.

In his confession, Edwards claimed to be a member of the Black Panthers and the Black Mafia and talked about starting a race war, investigators said. He talked at length about his desire to kill law enforcement officials, Hyche said

Last week, police officers swarmed the elementary school after a woman — later determined to be Edwards disguising his voice — called 911 and reported seeing a man putting a package covered in wires and attached to a timer on a car parked on campus.

Investigators later determined the alleged bomb to be fake. While it did contain gunpowder, there was no way it could detonate, officials said, insisting that the kids inside the school were never in any danger.

Police named Edwards as a suspect when they determined that the phony 911 call came from his cell phone. Additionally, investigators determined that Dilligard purchased the timer on the fake bomb — a stopwatch from Walmart — after they reviewed security footage from the store.

The two were taken into custody Tuesday night.

During questioning, both suspects confessed to making the bogus bomb and dumping it at the school. Edwards detailed his plans to kill cops, although it’s unclear why he backed out of them.

"My guys believe this individual to be a very dangerous person,” Hyche said of Edwards. “This arrest probably did stop something bad from happening.”

TRUSSVILLE, Alabama -- A convicted felon who claims he wanted to shoot cops is behind bars in connection with the explosives device planted outside of a Trussville elementary school. Authorities today announced state charges against 35-year-old ...

A couple who police say claimed ties to the New Black Panther Party have been charged with planting a fake bomb at an elementary school earlier this month. Zachary Edwards, 35, and Raphel Dilligard, 34, of Birmingham confessed that they planned to ...

An Alabama couple planted a fake bomb at a suburban elementary school hoping to shoot officers arriving at the scene or even rob a bank, police said Wednesday. Zachary Edwards, 35, and Raphel Dilligard, 34, of Birmingham face charges that include ...

A couple that police say claimed ties to the New Black Panther Party was arrested and charged with planting a fake bomb at an elementary school in Birmingham, Alabama. It's what they planned to do next that's really chilling. Zachary Edwards, 35, and ...

Students leave Tasby Middle School, where a fellow classmate who was in contact with a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus had been removed from school in Dallas, Texas October 1, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Stone. 5343816. A man who claims to be ...

At least four people were shot across the country during Black Friday sales, including a Walmart customer who died in a fight over a parking space. Three separate shootings — at a New Jersey Macy's, a Tennessee mall and a Nevada Walmart — killed two ...

When Black Friday sales opened early Thursday night, some eager shoppers finished giving thanks and rushed to the stores. But for a few families, the overnight rush brought tragedy. Three men were shot outside busy Black Friday sales near Reno, Nevada ...

As stores opened their doors for Black Friday sales, multiple violent incidents have occurred across the country. Tragedy in New Jersey. A man is dead and his brother is hospitalized following an early morning shooting in the parking lot of a New ...

A crowd rushes into a JC Penny store in Midland, Texas on Nov. 24, 2016. Photo: AP. SEE ALSO. Black Friday kicks off with deadly shooting at mall. :0. Two people were shot — one fatally — in the... Black Friday kicks off with deadly shooting at mall.

Cybersecurity is fast becoming personal as well as a national threat as Google warned prominent educators and journalists that hackers have been trying to get into their accounts.

Reports of cyberhacking the accounts of prominent people in education and journalism has been making the rounds on social media. Some of those who have been targeted Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize economist; Michael McFaul, Stanford University professor and a former US diplomat; Jon Lovett, Atlantic magazine writer; Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine columnist; and Julia Ioffe, columnist at Foreign Policy and Politico.

Google issued the warning in form of a banner where the supposed targeted people can see it when they logged in to their email accounts. The banner bears the warning which says Google has detected some hackers backed by the government are trying to steal their passwords. Those who received the warning said their accounts are backed by a two-factor authentication.

Along with the warning, Google also included a linked that advised the account holders how to keep their accounts secure. This is not the first time Google warned its users. In fact, it has been issuing warnings to its users from time to time.

A Google spokesman said the warnings have nothing to do with the hacking attempts that have occurred recently but by events that happened over the past month. He also explained why they delayed in issuing the warnings saying they didn't want the hackers to detect what tools and strategies they use to detect the attacks.

According to reports, if the warning concerns old cyberattacks, it is possible that they are related to the spear phishing campaign in November 8 after Donald Trump's presidential victory. According to security firm Veloxity, the Russian government hackers were behind te attacks.

Two women reported being shot at while driving in unrelated incidents in Des Moines Thursday night. The first shooting was reported shortly after 8 p.m. The gunfire did not hit the 30-year-old woman or her car, but a bullet struck a nearby house in the ...

A kayaker found bones that appeared to be human in Gray's Lake Thursday morning, police said. At about 10 a.m., Des Moines police responded to Gray's Lake Park, just southwest of downtown, where a kayaker had discovered bones in the lake, said Sgt.

A 20-year-old Des Moines man was fatally shot outside a gas station the evening of Thanksgiving, police said. At about 6:50 p.m. Thursday, Des Moines police responded to Git-N-Go, 816 E. Euclid Ave., where several gunshots had been fired at a group of ..

The fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a St. Anthony police officer brought international attention to Minnesota and comes during a record year for police-involved fatalities in the state.

Police officers have fatally shot 13 people this year, the most since the state began keeping records 38 years ago. The previous high was 12 deaths, in both 2010 and 2015.

Since 1995, officers have killed at least 151 people — almost seven per year, according to Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension records and Pioneer Press research. More than half of those fatalities — 81 — are in the last eight years. Each year since 2009, there have been between seven and 13 fatalities involving police.

“I think there’s just too many people out there that have firearms when they commit crimes — they have a total disregard for life or public safety, and they’re willing to use their guns,” said Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.

This year, around the country, officers faced instances of ambush shootings, making it a particularly dangerous year.

ASSAULTS AGAINST OFFICERS ALSO UP

In Minnesota, a growing number of assaults against police officers have coincided with the increase in fatal shootings by police. Officers have been assaulted more than 300 times each year since 2011, according to BCA data. In previous years, the average was less than 200.

At the same time, however, violent crime and weapons offenses, such as illegal gun possession or concealment, generally have declined in the last decade. Last year was an exception, with weapons crimes at their highest point in nine years.

Chris Burbank, director for law enforcement engagement at the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the question of a correlation between assaults on officers and use of force by police is not simple.

“You have to look and say ‘Is that a chicken-and-egg comparison?’ ” said Burbank. “Is it because of these interactions that you’re getting more assaults on officers or more officer use of force?”

‘STOLEN LIVES’ SCROLL RUNS OUT OF ROOM

Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Twin Cities organization, has been researching cases of police-involved fatalities — not only those involving shootings — in Minnesota since 2000. They write the names of those killed on a “Stolen Lives” scroll that’s more than 30 feet long, but they’ve run out of room and will be adding a 15-foot extension, said Michelle Gross, the group’s president.

“It’s important for people to understand that real people’s lives are affected by police misconduct,” Gross said. “People don’t often have an idea of how significant this issue is.”

Gross stresses that her group doesn’t believe all killings by police are unjustified. But “we think that far fewer are justified than what the police departments and the various investigations claim are justified.”

WHAT’S DRIVING INCREASE?

People have theories about why officer-involved shootings are up in Minnesota.

Larry Brubaker, a retired FBI agent who worked in the Twin Cities, has tracked fatal shootings by police in Minnesota since 1981 and written two books about them.

Like Flaherty, he believes officers are facing more guns on the streets.

“People don’t want to talk things out,” he said. “… I know this sounds trite, but when officers are saying: ‘Let me see your hands. Stop, don’t come any closer,’ if people would only comply with these orders, I think there would be less shootings.”

“We’re in a slump for violent crime, so it’s hard to imagine why more people are being killed by police when violent crime rates are going down,” she said. “I don’t know if some of it is the empowerment in this culture of allowing police to use excessive force with impunity also bleeds into more killings by police.”

But Flaherty said officers these days receive even more training in alternatives to using a weapon.

“In the last few years, there’s been a greater push for providing officers a skill set, including de-escalation skills, that hopefully may prevent them having to use their gun,” said Flaherty. He noted another common scenario officers face are confrontations with people who are having a mental crisis.

WORK BEING DONE NATIONALLY TO STUDY POLICE SHOOTINGS

Nationally, the trend of police-involved shootings has varied, said Burbank of the Center for Policing Equity.

“You’ve got some places that are up, some places that are down,” he said. “At the end of the year, when you take them all and put them together, I don’t think that we’re going to have drastically more shootings than we did the year over.”

But Burbank said it’s a mistake to examine the numbers alone.

“Looking strictly at ‘How many did we have?’ gives the false impression that, well, if it’s lower than it was last year then that’s good and if it’s higher, then that’s bad,” said Burbank, who’s also a retired Salt Lake City police chief. “But any loss of life is significant and not good. That represents a failure of policing and of our society.”

The Center for Policing Equity is collecting data from about 170 law enforcement agencies throughout the country, including ones in Minnesota. They’ll conduct an in-depth analysis for each agency, which will include studying the underlying causes of uses of force and “the inherent bias in organizations and employees that work there,” Burbank said.

“What we can say about officer-involved shootings is masculinity plays into them, lack of experience plays into them,” said Burbank. The center is examining the cases more, especially the role of racial disparities.

There is not an official database of fatal police shootings in Minnesota, but the BCA records information about officers discharging their firearms in annual reports. The report that contains information about 2016 cases won’t be published until halfway through next year.

A Pioneer Press analysis in 2015 found four fatal police shootings in the past decade that were not recorded in the BCA records as fatalities, so the statistics in this article are based on BCA records and Pioneer Press research, including about the cases for 2016.

A LOOK AT 2016 POLICE-INVOLVED FATALITIES

1. John Olaf Birkeland, Feb. 10, Roseville: Officers shot Birkeland, 52, when he refused orders from police to drop a knife he was using to stab a police dog, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office. Birkeland had a history of problems with alcohol and mental health issues and an autopsy showed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.28. A grand jury found the officers legally justified.

2. Map Kong, March 17, Burnsville: Officers shot Kong 15 times after he ran from his car with a knife in his hand. Kong, who was 38 and mentally ill, was found to have amphetamine and methamphetamine in his system. A grand jury cleared the officers involved; Kong’s family has filed a federal lawsuit.

3. Denise Fairchild, March 29, Aitkin: Law enforcement officers shot Fairchild, 50, after she threatened to kill herself and fired multiple shots at officers in the French Lake Wildlife Management Area, authorities have said.

4. Raul Marquez-Heraldes, April 4, Minneapolis: Officers shot Marquez-Heraldes as he stabbed a man, according to the Hennepin County attorney’s office, which said the officers would not be charged. The 50-year-old was found to have methamphetamine in his blood at levels to produce psychotic behavior, the county attorney’s office said.

5. Jaffort Demont Smith, May 9, St. Paul: Officers shot Smith, 33, after he shot a woman and fired at officers, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The Washington County attorney’s office is handling the case to avoid a conflict of interest for the Ramsey County attorney’s office and plans to present it to a grand jury at the end of December.

6. Eugene Francis Smith, May 26, St. Paul: When officers shot a pit bull that charged at them, the 29-year-old Smith shot at officers and they returned fire, killing him, the BCA said. Ramsey County prosecutors are reviewing the case.

7. Philando Castile, July 6, Falcon Heights: After St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over, the 32-year-old informed the officer he had a gun. Castile had a permit to carry the firearm. Yanez told Castile not to reach for the gun and the 32-year-old replied that he was not. Yanez shot Castile seven times. The Ramsey County attorney says he believes Castile never removed or tried to remove his handgun from his pocket. Yanez is charged with manslaughter and his attorney says he will plead not guilty.

8. Adam Jo Klimek, Aug. 2, Alexandria: Klimek, 31, went to a home where he thought he was meeting a 14-year-old girl, but it turned out to be an undercover operation to catch people soliciting minors. He pulled a knife and approached BCA agents, ignoring their commands to drop it and was within 4 feet of the agents when they opened fire, killing him, according to the Douglas County attorney, who cleared the officers.

9. Justin Kulhanek-Derks, Aug. 28, Eagan: The 37-year-old opened fire on officers who approached him and they shot back, according to the BCA. Neighbors said Kulhanek-Derks had been in a relationship that recently ended, was drinking more frequently, appeared depressed and talked of hurting himself or someone else.

10. Dahir Ahmed Adan, Sept. 17, St. Cloud: Adan stabbed and injured 10 people at the Crossroads Center mall. Witnesses said Adan referenced Islam during the attack and the FBI has said Adan’s behavior and actions suggested he had been radicalized. An off-duty Avon police officer shot and killed the 20-year-old and the Stearns County attorney said the officer’s use of force was justified.

11. Jamie Joseph Lewis, Sept. 26, Burnsville: Officers responded to a report of a suicidal man with a gun. They found him hiding in a tree line. Lewis, 48, pointed a gun at police and an officer shot him, according to emergency radio traffic.

12. Kristofer Daniel Youngquist, Oct. 23, rural Lanesboro: Police said Youngquist was a domestic assault suspect who was in a three-hour standoff with officers. The 45-year-old man was holding a rifle, which was later determined to be a pellet gun, when a police sergeant fatally shot him.

13. Jay Johanne Holmgren, Oct. 28, Traverse County: Holmgren fled police for 50 miles, shot through his rear window at law enforcement and rammed a police vehicle, according to the BCA. He ran from his vehicle and pointed his gun at officers. A sheriff’s deputy shot and killed the 37-year-old man.